Keziah Coffin eBook

The captain stared at the note. Then he threw
it to the floor and started for the door. The
minister sprang from his chair and called to him.

“Nat,” he cried. “Nat!
Stop! where are you going?”

Hammond turned.

“Goin’?” he growled. “Goin’?
I’m goin’ to find her, first of all.
Then I’m comin’ back to wait for him.”

“But you won’t have to wait. He’ll
never come. He’s dead.”

“Dead? Dead? By the everlastin’!
this has been too much for you, I ought to have known
it. I’ll send the doctor here right off.
I can’t stay myself. I’ve got to
go. But—­”

“Listen! listen to me! Ansel Coffin is
dead, I tell you. I know it. I know all
about it. That was what I wanted to see you about.
Did Keziah tell you of the San Jose and the sailor
who died of smallpox in this very building? In
that room there?”

“Yes. John, you—­”

“I’m not raving. It’s the truth.
That sailor was Ansel Coffin. I watched with
him and one night, the night before he died, he spoke
Keziah’s name. He spoke of New Bedford
and of Trumet and of her, over and over again.
I was sure who he was then, but I called in Ebenezer
Capen, who used to know Coffin in New Bedford.
And he recognized him. Nat, as sure as you and
I are here this minute, Ansel Coffin, Aunt Keziah’s
husband, is buried in the Trumet cemetery.”

CHAPTER XXI

IN WHICH MR. STONE WASHES HIS HANDS

Mr. Abner Stone, of Stone & Barker, marine outfitters
and ship chandlers, with a place of business on Commercial
Street in Boston, and a bank account which commanded
respect throughout the city, was feeling rather irritable
and out of sorts. Poor relations are always a
nuisance. They are forever expecting something,
either money—­in Mr. Stone’s case
this particular expectation was usually fruitless—­or
employment or influence or something. Mr. Stone
was rich, he had become so by his own ability and
unaided effort. He was sure of that—­often
mentioned it, with more or less modesty, in the speeches
which he delivered to his Sunday-school class and
at the dinners of various societies to which he belonged.
He was a self-made man and was conscious that he had
done a good job.

Therefore, being self-made, he saw no particular reason
why he should aid in the making of others. If
people were poor they ought to get over it. Poverty
was a disease and he was no doctor. He had been
poor once himself, and no one had helped him.
“I helped myself,” he was wont to say,
with pride. Some of his rivals in business, repeating
this remark, smiled and added that he had been “helping
himself” ever since.

Mr. Stone had “washed his hands” of his
cousin, Keziah Coffin, or thought he had. After
her brother Solomon died she had written to him, asking
him to find her a position of some kind in Boston.
“I don’t want money, I don’t want
charity,” wrote Keziah. “What I want
is work. Can you get it for me, Abner? I
write to you because father used to tell of what you
said to him about gratitude and how you would never
rest until you had done something in return for what
he did for you.”